If you love a great cocktail, you don’t want to miss this festival! NCD features pairing dinners, cocktail classes, cocktail competitions, parties, bar takeovers, happy hours, and a lot more fun than you can shake a cocktail shaker at.

NCD had me create marketing images for the their website and socialmedia, ahead of the festival itself, where I’ll also be the official photographer for the event. I was asked to create exteriors of the principle bars involved as well as portraits of some of the bartenders. The theme for the bartender portraits was to use a vintage cocktail shaker from the 1950’s and also include vintage bottles of liquor from the same era, placed on the bar. Jon Karel, owner of Buffalo Proper and a long time portrait subject, supplied the goods. Simple and pretty straightforward. But the real magic is the personalities of the bartenders. That’s what I love about making pictures of these folks so much.

My friends at Ballyhoo are involved in so many other projects and just generally crazy busy, so they had to drop out of the NCD festival. But I wanted to include the above photo of Sarah, becasue I love this image so much.